Desperate Fire (Angel in the Whirlwind Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The outline,” Junayd said. Kat had to suppress a flicker of annoyance at how casually he said it, as if he should have had access. “It is a bold plan. Yours?”

  “Mine and Admiral Christian’s,” Kat said flatly. “What do you make of it?”

  Junayd cocked his head. “You can afford to lose?”

  “Yes,” Kat said. “Is there even a remote chance they can take out the entire fleet?”

  “I rather doubt it,” Junayd said. “But they were throwing all sorts of resources at new weapons systems when I . . . left.”

  “If they’ve come up with something new,” Kat said, “they haven’t shown it to us.”

  “I imagine they wouldn’t,” Junayd said. “They’d want to keep it in reserve until they needed it.”

  Junayd had to fight to keep his mind from reeling. Operation Hammer wasn’t just daring, it was, by the standards of all pre-war planning, utterly insane. No one had fought a full-scale interstellar war, true, but all the simulations suggested that the attacker would advance slowly, system by system, while the defender struggled to cut supply lines while readying a defense. Driving straight at the enemy’s homeworld was madness. If the offensive failed, a large chunk of the attacker’s mobile firepower would be destroyed or cut off, unable to retreat. If the offensive failed badly enough, the defender might be able to take advantage of the disaster to strike back.

  But the Commonwealth was so powerful that it could pull off such an offensive and come out ahead, even if the offensive failed completely. Losing 6th Fleet would be bad, but the Theocracy would take a horrendous beating. The Commonwealth would still be able to hold the line, still be able to churn out newer and better ships. The war might be prolonged, yet it wouldn’t be lost. There was no way the Theocracy could win.

  “They’ll defend Ahura Mazda with everything they have,” he said. “They won’t run.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Kat said. “A chance to crush their remaining fleets. It’s worth taking.”

  “Getting down to the surface might be doable,” Junayd continued. “But after that, crushing their forces on the ground will be hard.”

  “We know,” Kat said. She looked up at him. Junayd realized, suddenly, just how bright her blue eyes were. “Can you assist us?”

  Junayd took a moment to assemble his thoughts. “It’s fairly safe to say,” he said, “that the vast majority of civilians on the ground will do what they can to stay out of trouble. They know that doing anything other than keeping their heads down will probably get them killed, or worse. A number do resent and fear their rulers, but there’s very little they can do in a society where literally everyone is watching.”

  He took a breath. “I did have allies,” he said. “And as I am believed dead, I don’t think they will have made any attempt to round them up. My family went into hiding with some of them. But I don’t know how loyal they’ll be in the aftermath of an invasion.”

  Kat frowned. “So you can’t raise the masses to assist us?”

  “You’ll have to override their television and radio programming,” Junayd said. “If you can overpower those, I will speak to the masses. But they may not listen.”

  “And even if they do,” the man sitting next to Kat said, “they’ll be unarmed.”

  “Yes,” Junayd said. “I suspect, as their society breaks down, you’ll get people willing to work with you. But many others will be too fearful of retaliation to show themselves.”

  He paused. “Clear evidence you are going to win would help,” he added. “Even being there, despite all of their propaganda, would shatter the lies. But it isn’t going to be easy.”

  Kat didn’t look pleased, but she nodded. “Start working out a plan to approach your people.” She paused. “How would this affect your family?”

  “It depends,” Junayd said. “I would have to make covert contact with my allies first. But I don’t know what’s happened on the ground since I left.”

  “I see,” Kat said. “What might have happened?”

  Junayd shrugged helplessly. “They may have been adopted and slid into other families,” he said. “My wives and daughters might have been married off to men who can keep them safe. Or they might still be safe, hidden in a complex well away from the Tabernacle. Or they might have been caught and executed for daring to be related to me. I just don’t know.”

  “I understand,” Kat said. She leaned forward. “We will do our best to save them.”

  “I know,” Junayd said. “And I will do as you ask.”

  “That’s all we need, for the moment,” Kat said. “Unless you think you can talk the starship crews into surrendering.”

  “I doubt it,” Junayd said. He considered the problem for a long moment. There were so many watchers seeded through a starship’s crew that nothing went unnoticed. “I only managed to defect because I was in command of the entire squadron. Anyone else . . . they’d need to plan a mutiny and that’s nearly impossible to do without being detected.”

  “Gibson managed it,” Kat muttered.

  She looked up before Junayd could ask who Gibson was. “Work on your plan, Admiral,” she said. “We’ll be departing soon.”

  “Indeed,” Junayd said. “And may God defend the right.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “That’s the last of the reporters in their cabins, Captain,” Roach said. “I’m afraid they’re unhappy about their living space.”

  William waved his hand, dismissively. Sixth Fleet was on the verge of departing McCaughey. The reporters, and everyone else, were under a strict communications blackout. Their complaints would go unheard until the fleet reached its destination, whereupon there would be too many other problems for the government to care about a bunch of spoiled-brat journalists. Didn’t they realize there was a war on? Or that the cabins they’d been given were twice as large as a lieutenant’s cabin?

  Probably not, he thought dryly. They’re used to five-star hotels.

  He dismissed the issue as he turned back to the tactical display. Sixth Fleet was slowly altering position, assembling its squadrons for the jump into hyperspace. A handful of drones were already being emplaced to masquerade as the missing ships, hoping to convince any watching eyes that 6th Fleet was still orbiting McCaughey. William had no idea if the Theocracy had the system under observation or not, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. It was worth some effort to try to convince the enemy that 6th Fleet was staying put.

  And it will be completely worthless if they have the system under real-time observation, he reminded himself. They’ll see the fleet leave and the ECM drones take its place.

  He glanced at Roach. “Ship’s status?”

  “Thunderchild is at full readiness, sir,” Roach reported. “She’s ready to depart on command.”

  William allowed himself a moment of relief as he sat back and waited for the signal from Hammerhead. A month of frantic preparations, all culminating in the single greatest offensive in human history—it would go down in the record books, whatever happened. It felt odd to operate as part of a vast fleet instead of a small squadron or a lone ship, but there was no denying the sheer firepower 6th Fleet possessed. Or just how unhappy the Theocracy would be to see it appear in their skies. The shock of discovering how badly the war was going might upset their entire system.

  But it probably won’t, he told himself. Fanatics can always come up with excuses for not thinking.

  “Hold us in place until we get the order,” he said.

  He forced himself to relax. Thunderchild was at full readiness. Her decks had been scrubbed, her compartments washed thoroughly . . . and then every last section had been checked and rechecked during the frantic preparations for departure. He had no reason to worry, no reason to think that anything was wrong, yet he knew his ship was about to face her most dangerous test. The Theocracy would throw everything they had at her.

  “Captain, we are picking up a signal from the flag,” Lieutenant Richard Ball said. The
communications officer looked grim. “The gateway is opening now. We are to proceed into hyperspace as planned.”

  William sucked in a breath as the gateway blossomed to life on the display, an immense funnel of energy leading straight into hyperspace. It was huge, large enough to take the entire squadron; others, blossoming nearby, would allow other squadrons to follow them. His ship lurched as the gravity waves struck her hull, a grim reminder that realspace didn’t like being torn asunder. There were just too many gateways in too close proximity to each other.

  “Take us through,” he ordered.

  Thunderchild shuddered as she slid through the portal and into hyperspace. William felt queasy, just for a second; he swallowed hard, concentrating on his mental discipline. He’d been feeling the passage into hyperspace more and more lately, something that bothered him more than he cared to admit. Some people could never stand hyperspace, not even for a second. They needed to remain in stasis pods for the entire duration of the voyage.

  And if I lost the ability to work in hyperspace, he thought morbidly, would that make me a groundhog after all these years?

  “Transit complete, Captain,” Gross reported.

  “Tactical datanet up and running, Captain,” Ball added. “The fleet command network is fully engaged. Repeater nodes are relaying test messages now.”

  William nodded, stiffly. No one had tried to fly such a fleet through hyperspace, not in all recorded history. Merely coordinating five hundred ships was a nightmare, a nightmare made worse by the ebb and flow of hyperspace energies. Signals could be lost or garbled, entire squadrons could lose touch with the remainder of the fleet. Contingency plans had been thought up, of course, but William knew all too well that the real problems would come from issues they hadn’t foreseen.

  And if we are attacked, he thought, an energy storm might really ruin our day.

  “Signal from the flag,” Ball said. “The fleet is to proceed along the planned vector to the first waypoint.”

  “Acknowledge,” William ordered. The message would be repeated a dozen times, Thunderchild forwarding the signal to every other ship just to make sure they all got the message. “Helm, keep us in formation.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Gross said.

  “Local hyperspace appears to be clear,” Cecelia put in. “Captain, there’s a lot of distortion.”

  “Keep a wary eye on it,” William ordered. Five hundred ships in such close proximity . . . he’d be surprised if there weren’t any distortion. He’d actually proposed breaking up the fleet and having each squadron proceed to the first waypoint by a different route, but Admiral Christian had vetoed the idea. He preferred to keep his fleet together. “And watch for any raiders.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Cecelia said.

  William sat back in his command chair and waited. It was a week, as the starship flew, to the Gap, but Admiral Christian had decided on an oblique approach. William understood the logic and the importance of avoiding contact with enemy ships as much as possible, yet it also introduced a degree of slippage into the schedule. Who knew what would happen if too much time was wasted?

  Perhaps nothing, he thought. We’ll have a clear path once we’re through the minefield.

  He glanced at Roach. “Continue running tactical simulations,” he ordered. “When the time comes to cross the minefield, we have to be ready.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Roach said.

  Observation blisters were very rare on a Theocratic starship. Junayd himself, for all of his rank, had never been in a place where he could sit and gaze at the shimmering lights of hyperspace. He’d never been quite sure why observation blisters weren’t included, even though he’d heard all the official and unofficial excuses. Perhaps his former masters merely wished to avoid reminding the spacers that there was an entire universe outside their hulls.

  Wishful thinking, if that was what they had in mind, he thought, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared out at the fleet. Spacers know too much about the hard realities of life.

  He sucked in his breath as a superdreadnought suddenly seemed to loom towards him, only to flicker out of existence when he blinked. Hyperspace played odd tricks on the Mark-I Eyeball as well as humanity’s most advanced sensors; the more he stared at the fleet, the odder it looked. Destroyers larger than superdreadnoughts, assault carriers elongating in a manner that should have torn them apart, flickering lights that seemed to follow the fleet, then vanish in directions his mind wasn’t designed to follow. Perhaps the old story about the spacer who’d seen God in hyperspace was true after all, he reflected. There were certainly plenty of strange stories that were completely unverifiable yet passed from spacer to spacer as if they were unquestionable truth.

  The hatch hissed open behind him. He glanced back just in time to see Kat Falcone step into the compartment. Her lips thinned with quickly hidden disapproval, an expression none of his female relatives would have dared permit themselves. It wasn’t their place to disapprove of anything.

  “Commodore,” he said, turning back to the blister.

  “Admiral,” she answered. She stepped up next to him. “Does this bring back memories?”

  Junayd half turned his head to look at Kat. Her arms were crossed, striking a defiant pose even though she was looking at the fleet rather than him. It couldn’t be easy for her to have him on her ship, he suspected. He wouldn’t have found it very easy if their positions were reversed. She’d be lucky if she wasn’t kept permanently confined to quarters under heavy supervision.

  “I never commanded such a powerful fleet,” he said. Admiral Christian was a lucky man. But, at the same time, coordinating such a force had to be a nightmare. “The largest fleet I ever commanded had only five squadrons of superdreadnoughts.”

  Kat glanced at him. “Do you miss it?”

  “I miss being in command of my own ship,” Junayd said honestly. “But I never enjoyed the freedom you did, not when there was a cleric on my ship. My orders could be overruled at any moment.”

  “My sympathies,” Kat said. Her lips twisted with distaste. “Why did you leave?”

  Junayd frowned, turning back to the blister. “I knew I no longer had a future,” he said. “If I’d stayed, I would have been made to pay for my failures.”

  “And so you fled to us,” Kat said. “You had no other aim in mind?”

  “I wanted to survive,” Junayd said. “And I wanted my family to survive. The only way I could do both was to defect, after leaving enough evidence to suggest that I died on my ship.”

  “You destroyed a superdreadnought and killed her entire crew just to escape,” Kat pointed out.

  Her voice was surprisingly mild. And yet, there was an edge to her tone.

  Junayd looked at her again. He could tell she didn’t approve. “Would you rather face that ship in battle? Again?” He shook his head. “I had no grand scheme, no plan to turn the defeat into a victory,” he confessed. “I merely wanted to survive.”

  Kat looked doubtful. “And you gave no thought to the future?”

  She pressed on before he could answer. “What do you think will happen, after we win?”

  “Chaos,” Junayd said. “The Theocracy will tear itself apart. All the little cracks within our society . . . they’ll tear themselves open, bringing chaos and anarchy in their wake. Too many people want revenge for everything the government has done.”

  “And where do you see yourself?” Kat asked. “A returning leader, ready to unite your planet?”

  Junayd laughed humorlessly. “If I can do something to mitigate the chaos, I will,” he said. “But I doubt many of the people on the ground will listen to me.”

  He closed his eyes in bitter pain. He’d been famous back on Ahura Mazda. The population had thrilled to the tales of Admiral Junayd, God’s righteous warrior. But he’d known he could be broken just as easily if his masters saw him as a threat. His family had been held hostage to guarantee his good behavior. And even after he’d started making contingency pl
ans of his own, he’d known there were no guarantees. His wives and children might already be dead.

  “Tell me something,” Kat said. “Do you feel any guilt?”

  Junayd cocked his head. “For what?”

  “You commanded the battle fleet that captured Cadiz and five other worlds,” Kat said, bluntly. “Millions of spacers and civilians died in the fighting or afterwards, during the occupation. One of those worlds has practically been swept clean of life. Do you feel any guilt?”

  “I do not know,” Junayd said, after a moment.

  Kat lifted her eyebrows. “You do not know?”

  Junayd stared back at her, evenly. “I believed it was my duty to serve my religion in any way I could,” he said. “What I did . . . I did in its name.”

  “Millions are dead,” Kat said.

  “I believed,” Junayd said.

  He sighed. “I was at the heart of the Theocracy for a very long time, Commodore,” he added reluctantly. “I saw corruption on a truly staggering scale. The laws enforced so harshly, against the common men and women, simply don’t apply to their leaders. Many of them were more interested in enriching themselves than they were in hunting down unbelievers and planning for war. Others . . . had lost touch with their people, believing them to be little more than sheep who needed to be kept in line with the whip. And yet I clung to my delusions about the way things worked.

  “And then I lost a battle and suddenly—”

  “You were put on the spot,” Kat finished.

  “I gave it my all,” Junayd said. He couldn’t keep a hint of bitterness from leaking out. “And yet, I was tried and condemned for losing an unwinnable battle. And then they gave me an impossible task, with a death sentence hanging over my head. I chose to leave when it was clear I couldn’t win.”

  He met her eyes. “I want my family to live,” he said. “I want my homeworld to be free. I want—it doesn’t matter what I want. All that matters is stopping the Theocracy before it is too late.”